Storytelling

People love stories. It’s in our genes.

When was the last time you heard a great story? And when was the last time you told one?

Do you think you’re good at it? If not, are you trying to get better?

I ask because storytelling is a great tool for influencing.

People relate to stories. When you’re trying to get your point across, do you think it’s more effective to use a list of facts or a story?

Yep. The story will be more effective. It allows your audience to connect with the folks in your story.

Let’s try something. Find a long-form sales page on the internet. Search a particular keyword and check out some of the top results. One of them will probably be a long-form sales page.

As you read through the sales page, pay attention to the story that is being told. It often starts out with someone having a particular problem.

The “subject” has tried everything to fix it.  And she tried everything so eventually got discouraged.

What comes next? Introduction of a possible solution. But the solution won’t be revealed right away.

There will also be an explanation of how other people or other things or forces are against the “subject”. This is why the “subject” wasn’t successful.

The end of the story shows how the product took care of the problem and how the person in the story used the product to successfully to solve the problem.

Of course there may be variations of this theme, but this is basically the flow of a long-form sales letter. It uses storytelling.

As you work on your business you don’t need to be actively selling something to use storytelling.

Hopefully you are trying to get folks to know, like and trust you. Storytelling can be used in each of those of phases.

For example, you can tell stories to help engage your subscribers. It’s been shown that storytelling can go a long way in helping email marketers connect with subscribers.

Your readers will get to know more about you through your stories. They will also get you like you and trust you more as well.

As you share more through storytelling, you will often find your readers will want more stories.

Do you use storytelling in your business? If so, hit reply and let me know if you consider it a value add.